


True North

by hurry_sundown



Category: Firefly
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 07:05:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hurry_sundown/pseuds/hurry_sundown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow, they always end up turned the same way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Round and Round

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-series, Mal/Jayne. Shifting POVs, grammatically suspect, subject to tinkering. First published on LiveJournal, October 14, 2005.

They were drunk the first time.

Back from a job, all breathing and accounted for and the coin paid, but the job only mostly legal and went not-smooth, which explains the hard burn and the lack of inclination to amuse themselves dirt-side. Kaylee now in the engine room, pampering her girl for a job well-done, and the boat on auto-pilot, Wash pampering his girl for a job done, period, and there's the two of them at the kitchen table with a bottle of engine hootch. Shot by shot, goes down rough and then a little smoother (smoother than the job, anyway), and there's stories and speculation, 'cause it's times like these Jayne is most likely to wonder why Mal took him in, and Mal is most likely to tell him (but doesn't, and it's not what you think).

So there's drinking, and Mal's tipped back in his chair, and the look he gives Jayne is enough to get him to follow when the chair thumps forward and Mal makes a show of stretching his arms and rolling his shoulders ('cause Jayne ain't stupid, he's lived this long, right?), but only says, "Gettin' late."

They stop at the bunk, and Jayne goes down first, which is good, 'cause he's there when Mal loses his footing on the ladder and would've fallen on his head, 'cept for Jayne catchin' him. Mal rights himself carefully, looks around.

"This my bunk?"

"Yeah."

"Oh."

Mal shrugs, drops his suspenders and starts unbuttoning his shirt, gets two undone before Jayne puts a hand on him, reaching for the third.

"Jayne?"

Jayne stills, listens for the voice in his head, the one that sometimes tells him when to duck or where to shoot or advises him about gettin' out now, with his _gowan_ still intact.

But Mal don't say stop, just "You could be seein' to your ownself," and then his hands are on the gunbelt Jayne's still wearing, always wears 'cause it's his job to wear it, until Mal unbuckles the belt and drapes it carefully over the chair - wouldn't want to drop Binky on the floor. Which is when anybody's hands start going anywhere, Jayne unbuttoning Mal's shirt, Mal pulling Jayne's T-shirt up over his head (and don't he look _shuai_ with his hair all ruffled up like that).

Hands touch skin, and there's a moment where time stretches thin, then snaps back to skinnin' out of pants and skivvies and _xie-xie ni Kwan Yin,_ Jayne does wear them, 'cause when you ain't been with a man in a handful of years (partly 'cause you lean toward women, partly 'cause a man's gotta be somethin' special before you'll even look), you don't rightly want to see it all at once.

Or maybe you do, 'cause soon as Jayne sees a chance, he drops Mal's skivvies to the floor, getting his first good look at a body he knows to be deceptive - lightly muscled, but Jayne's seen him end a fight with a fist where he would've used a gun. Or maybe a knife. And he's got three inches height and maybe 50 pounds on Mal, and still don't know if he could take him in a fair fight, which might be a thing worth knowin'.

A quick turn, and Mal finds himself on his bed, on his back, and Jayne's still - no, they're gone now, on the floor with the rest of their clothes, and Mal suddenly thinks on whether he's swept his bunk lately, which is the last clear thought he has before Jayne's rough hands start mapping the scars that start at his hairline, meander down his neck and shoulders, drift across chest and belly before leading a merry chase along his legs, ending at a jagged line around his ankle.

Jayne licks along that one, and Mal might've flown off the bed but for the arm thrown across his legs, and is Jayne _laughing_? Laughing against Mal's calf, then nipping along the inside of his leg, calf to knee to the crease between hip and thigh, wondering how it is that a man's _jiba_ could be so pretty (hell, he's always thought his own was pretty) while Mal's thinking that if Jayne don't get to the serious touchin' soon, he may resort to violence - probably ain't much of an idea as ideas go, 'cause Jayne's got three inches height and maybe 50 pounds on him, all hard muscle, and Mal's pretty sure he couldn't take him in a fair fight.


	2. Up, Then Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So they were drunk the first time.

So they were drunk the first time.

But not the second time.

Weeks in the black without a job, coin gone thin and then just gone, as near on the drift as they’ve ever been. Fuel cells wrung near to dust and they can’t set down without a job waiting else they may not get back up.

The hooch runs out first, and Jayne grumbles but figures it’s a good thing, ‘cause even them that’s happy drunks is like to turn mean after a couple weeks on rations, and he has no desire to compound their misery by beatin’ holy hell out of anybody. Don’t mean he wouldn’t appreciate a good throw-down to while away the time, but Kaylee’s too small, Wash is too breakable, and Zoe’d probably kill him on accident - leastways, she’d say it were an accident. That leaves Mal, and he shies away from the notion. Mal might kill him on accident, too.

‘Cause Mal ain’t takin’ it too good, this lack of work, like it’s a failing of his captainly ways and not just the ‘verse kickin’ them all in the _pigou_ as it’s wont to do. He ghosts about when he thinks the rest of them are asleep in their bunks, and Jayne’s seen him more than once slouched in the pilot’s chair, stark starin’ into the black, or at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, a cup of hot water (the tea run out a ways back) cooling at his elbow.

It ain’t right, seeing Mal like this, knowing not a one of them could do any better but he don’t excuse himself nohow. So next time Jayne spies him alone on the bridge he goes back to his bunk and unearths a treasure, something he’d ordinarily never share but it’s flat beyond him how else to approach Mal without getting knocked in the jaw at least.

When he reaches the hatchway Mal knows he’s there, heard him coming long before (not that Jayne was trying to sneak up, ‘cause sneaking up on Mal ain’t a good idea in the best of times). He doesn’t wait for Mal to shoo him off, just slides into the other chair and silently holds out the cigar.

Mal looks at it for minute. “Where’d you find this?”

“Had it stowed away. Been savin’ it.”

“Not for this, I wager.”

“Got no better reason,” Jayne says. “Figured maybe you’d share it with me, seein’ how it’s the last one.”

“Feelin’ generous, huh?”

Jayne shrugs. “Been known to happen.”

“I do recall.” Mal leans back in his chair, and it takes Jayne a minute for his brain to catch up with the conversation. _Oh._

Jayne feels his face flush, bides for time by biting the end off the cigar and lighting it, drawing a nice ember before passing it to Mal. Real quiet he says, “Didn’t think you were sober enough to remember.”

Mal lets the smoke go in rings – one, two, not quite three. “I ain’t like to forget. Been a while since anybody paid me that kind of mind.”

Jayne don’t say anything back, just ponders. They sit and smoke, passing the cigar back and forth until it’s near gone. Finally, a now-or-never breath and he says, “We could go again.” Mal startles, so Jayne adds quick, “For somethin’ to do, _dong ma?_ So you ain’t just mopin’ around.”

Mal’s eyes narrow, and there’s that quirk around his mouth that some mistake for a smile when they see it. “Jayne Cobb,” he drawls out slow, “Did you just offer me a mercy hump?”

Jayne neatly side-steps the danger in his path. “Won't be nothin’ merciful about it.”


	3. All In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, one time drunk, and the next time not. But the good and the bad, it all comes in threes.

So, one time drunk, and the next time not. But the good and the bad, it all comes in threes.

There was work again, after a time. An honest job don't pay like crime does, but it puts food on the table and fuels the boat, so Mal can't not be glad of it.

Except he is, a little, in some larcenous corner of his heart. So when Badger dangles a chance for some thievin', Mal jumps at it. And the coin gets paid, but how is another matter, and now they got food and fuel and store-bought whiskey, after Jayne puts two more men in the ground and takes twelve stitches in the chest for his trouble - Zoe had to dig around some for the slug.

Now Jayne's lying on the couch in the lounge, sleepy-eyed from a smoother he said he didn't need, but he couldn't fool Zoe and she pinched his nose shut until he swallowed it. Mal watches him from the doorway, wondering exactly when it was he stopped thinking on Jayne as the expendable part of his crew.

Because it's one thing for him to appreciate Jayne's way with a gun, or his fists - that's what Mal pays him for, pays him well, as it happens. And it's still that one thing if Mal is glad for his company on occasion, for a card game or a dust up, or yeah, _sui bian xing bie_. But this is another thing entire.

Before the rest of him knows where his feet are going, Mal's crounched down next to Jayne.

"That was a fool thing you did, Jayne Cobb." Mal tries to say it gruff.

Jayne's eyes flutter open, but the rest of him don't move, excepting his mouth. "Which thing would that be Mal? The thing where I saved your _luan pigu,_ or the thing where I made sure we got away?"

Mal's fingers barely touch the bandage on Jayne's chest. "The thing where you nearly got yourself done for. Can't always be countin' on dumb luck, Jayne. Would've put me in quite a predicament, you getting yourself killed off like that."

Jayne snorted softly. "I can see where it might have done. Prob'ly take you a whole week to find another merc."

Mal can't figure why that stings, but it does. "Take longer than that. Not too many fellas out there got your kind of skills."

"Oh, I don't know," Jaynes muses. "There was that _na hai biao zi_ at the Golden Lotus ... had a real sweet mouth on him, he did."

Mal falls back on his heels. " _Sa gua!_ I meant the shootin' and the trackin' and such."

Jayne raises an eyebrow.

Mal glares, then wilts. " _Tamade,_ " he says under his breath and kind of fond. "That, too, _man yi_?" He shakes his head. "We won't be trying that again for a bit, I expect."

"I don't know, Mal." Jayne manages a credible leer. "You could always kiss it better for me." 

"That ain't where you got shot, Jayne."


End file.
